SCIENTISTS CRITICISE HAWKING 'HYPE'

BBC News Online, 17 October 2001

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1604714.stm

By BBC News Online science editor Dr David Whitehouse

Professor Stephen Hawking's latest fears for the future of humanity have been
criticised by academics for being contradictory and little more than hype for
his forthcoming book.

The famous physicist said that the human race was likely to be wiped out by a
manmade, doomsday virus before the millennium was out, unless we set up colonies
in space.

He told a UK national newspaper that genetic engineering could be used to
"improve" human beings to meet the challenges of long-duration space travel.
Professor Hawking's comments came in advance of his new publication entitled The
Universe in a Nutshell.

But Dr Benny Peiser, from Liverpool John Moores University, UK, was highly
critical of the reported remarks. He told BBC News Online that Hawking's
predictions of terrestrial disaster had become increasingly wide-ranging and
unreasonable in recent years.

And space visionary Sir Arthur C Clarke told BBC News Online: "I am surprised
Professor Hawking didn't mention the danger of an asteroid impact which is
inevitable sooner or later. Admittedly, this is most unlikely to wipe out the
human race, but it could send us back to the Stone Age."

Finding remedies

Leading British anthropologist Dr Benny Peiser described the comments in the
Daily Telegraph newspaper as "regrettable hype".

"Over a year ago, he warned that the Earth was likely to get hotter and hotter
as a result of manmade CO2 emissions 'until it will be like Venus with boiling
sulphuric acid'... Now, drawing on the dread of bioterrorism, his latest
doomsday prophecy foretells our certain self-destruction as a result of
biological research."

He added: "Apocalyptics typically exaggerate the possible dangers we may face in
the future while ignoring or underestimating the probability of finding a
social, technological or medical remedy for the predicament."

Dr Peiser said that humans and our hominid ancestors had survived more than five
million years of recurring onslaughts from ice ages, impacts from space, and
global plague epidemics.

"Technological and societal evolution has now reached a level of complexity that
renders the probability of human survival for the next 1,000 years drastically
higher than at any previous stage of our long history.

"There is no reason to believe that our generation or [any in this] millennium
will be the last one on Earth," he added.